ABSTRACT
The use of force by an Argentine military regime against non-Argentine citizens may yet prove to have a salutary effect, if the advent of yet another military regime is no longer automatically greeted with the expectation that it will be ‘good for business’. The political role of the Argentine military is derived both from recurrent elements of the Argentine political structure, and from short term factors appropriate to particular regimes. Most basic among the recurrent elements is the structure of land ownership, which from an early period has been biased against immigrant groups. The military interventions of 1966 and 1976, with which this chapter will be particularly concerned, are undoubtedly at base the result of the unresolved status of the crisis of representation, and the enfeeblement of political institutions aggravated by repeated interventions in the past. The military preferred to show that they could be defeated only by a military regime.
